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304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
It is easy to be confusing. It is easy to write something beautiful and understandable for yourself. It's hard to write universal words which we can all connect.
The quilt is drawn up to her chin, hot as it is, with only her two hands and her face outside. She is propped on the pillow, with her head raised so she can see out the window, and we can hear him every time he takes up the adze or the saw. If we were deaf we could almost watch her face and hear him, see him. Her face is wasted away so that the bones draw just under the skin in white lines. Her eyes are like two candles when you watch them gutter down into the sockets of iron candle-sticks. But the eternal and the everlasting salvation and grace is not upon her.
I had a nightmare once I thought I was awake but I couldn鈥檛 see and couldn鈥檛 feel I couldn鈥檛 feel the bed under me and I couldn鈥檛 think what I was I couldn鈥檛 think of my name I couldn鈥檛 even think I am a girl I couldn鈥檛 even think I nor even think I want to wake up nor remember what was opposite to awake so I could do that I knew that something was passing but I couldn鈥檛 even think of time then all of a sudden I knew that something was it was wind blowing over me it was like the wind came and blew me back from where it was I was not blowing the room and Vardaman asleep and all of them back under me again and going on like a piece of cool silk dragging across my naked legs.
Back running, tunnelled between the two sets of bobbing mule ears, the road vanishes beneath the wagon as though it were a ribbon and the front axle were a spool.
Faulkner's not even trying to make anyone talk realistically. He's about something, I guess - lending epic weight to lifesize events - and I even kinda like it... but it's still basically ridiculous.
It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components - snuffings and stampings, smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair, an uncoordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is different from my is.
I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.
鈥淒ios sabe ver dentro de los corazones. Si es voluntad suya que no pensemos todos igual acerca de su novela, no soy yo qui茅n para discutir los divinos designios.鈥�Una familia, cumpliendo a rega帽adientes el deseo de la madre de ser enterrada en su pueblo natal (quiere yacer lo m谩s lejos posible de su marido y sus hijos), emprende el viaje en un carro destartalado a cuestas con el ata煤d que durante d铆as el hijo ha construido bajo la vigilante mirada de su madre moribunda. El viaje y sus grotescas y accidentadas peripecias mientras transportan el ata煤d cada vez m谩s pestilente ser谩n la novela. El resultado, la venganza de una mujer por la vida que le dio su marido.
鈥淪oy un elegido de Dios, pues 脡l castiga a aquel a quien 脡l ama. Pero que me aspen si es que 脡l no ha escogido, por lo que se ve, una manera harto extra帽a de demostrar su amor.鈥�Ya me dir谩n ustedes si un escritor mucho m谩s adecuado para contar esta historia no habr铆a sido Erskine Caldwell, que adem谩s era muy admirado por el propio Faulkner. Quienes hayan le铆do sus obras, que desde aqu铆 recomiendo, sabr谩n a qu茅 me refiero. Caldwell, con la misma mala leche que se estil贸 Faulkner al escribir su obra, aunque seguramente con una menor exhibici贸n formal y quiz谩s con una estructura m谩s convencional (la novela la forman cincuenta y nueve cap铆tulos narrados por quince personajes distintos, incluida la madre muerta, en una especie de mon贸logo interior) pero con much铆sima m谩s gracia y algo m谩s de cari帽o hacia sus personajes, habr铆a construido una fant谩stica comedia, una triste comedia, y un retrato insuperable de estos campesinos pobres e ignorantes, ingenuos, mezquinos y ego铆stas que forman la familia protagonista.
鈥淚 can remember how when I was young I believed Death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind - and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.鈥�
鈥淭hat鈥檚 what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.鈥�
鈥淢y [Her] daily life is an acknowledgment and expiation of my sin.鈥�